In-Game Benchmarks
Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 8 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of whether turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. Cyberpunk 2077 is also tested with Super Sampling (DLSS/FSR/XeSS). In total, each video card is tested 60 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier-to-read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors, and 240 helps show the performance ideal for the latest higher refresh displays.
So how did the RX 9070 XT Pulse do? Well at 1080p all of the tests except for one came in over 120 FPS with 13 of those sitting at over 240 FPS as well. This is the same as what I saw with the Steel Legend. At 1440p there are two results in that 60-119 FPS range and with 10 results in the 120-219 FPS range most results fall in that section but there were still 6 results over 240 FPS. This matched the Steel Legend as well. Then at 4k, we get the first result under 60 FPS. There are 7 results between 60 and 119 FPS and 8 from 120 to 219 with just two over 240 FPS. Here the RX 9070 XT Pulse has one more result up over 240 FPS when compared to the Steel Legend.
To get a better look at some of the cards that are the closest competition to the RX 9070 XT Pulse I have compiled all of the averaged FPS results at all three resolutions tested for a range of cards around the RX 9070 XT Pulse’s performance and price range. This really shows the performance difference between the RX 9070 XT Pulse and the 9070 XT Steel Legend which is surprising given that they both have the same clock speeds. The RX 9070 XT Pulse is ahead of the Steel Legend in all three resolutions with a 2.4 FPS gap at 1440p and a 2.5 FPS gap at 4k. That wasn’t enough to push it up ahead of any of the other cards but we still see it sitting ahead of the 7900 XTX at 1440p but not at 4k and ahead of the RTX 4080 SUPER across the board by a good margin. It does sit behind the RTX 5070 Ti in these averages, helped by the fact that Nvidia has support for DLSS 4 in our Cyberpunk 2077 test where AMD currently doesn’t have their latest FSR on the game.
Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below.
Another new addition to my testing was a few additional tests using Cyberpunk 2077. This is one of only a few games that support most of the tech from all three of the GPU companies. So I did tests at medium and ultra detail while having Super Sampling on for all of the cards. Using whatever the latest and greatest is supported. In this case, I tested with FSR 3.1. Just a note here, the AMD cards only allowed FSR when running windowed mode whereas Nvidia only performed well in fullscreen mode. Getting to see the Cyberpunk 2077 performance with and without FSR 3.1 shows just how much of a performance difference that it can make. With the RX 9070 XT Pulse at ultra detail that took the frame rate from 61.07 at 4k up to 207.17 FPS, a 239% increase.
